Organized trips to the radioactive zone around Chornobyl are among the most requested nontraditional tourist excursions in Ukraine
Wesley Dodd, a senior producer at the BBC`s Moscow Bureau, was very busy on April 25. He had to make sure his team was ready for a live broadcast from Kyiv by the BBC’s World Service and that all of his seven journalists were accredited for the next day’s memorial commemoration ceremony at the Chornobyl nuclear plant, located just 130 kilometers north of the Ukrainian capital. April 26 was the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl explosion, the world’s worst nuclear disaster, which sent radioactive fallout across Russia, Belarus and much of northern Europe in 1986.
Hundreds of journalists and others from all over the world have been equally preoccupied with the Chornobyl disaster, and not just because of its 20th anniversary. According to Chornobyl InterInform, a Ukrainian state agency that oversees all visits to the 30-kilometer exclusion zone surrounding the notorious nuclear plant, some 2,000 individuals and more than 150 official delegations consisting of foreign and Ukrainian journalists and politicians, and representatives of public organizations, have visited the zone in the last year.
Anniversary fuss aside, Kyiv travel agencies say interest in Chornobyl from foreign visitors has been high for the last several years, spurring the agencies to include a special ‘Chornobyl trip’ among their list of tours.
“A trip to Chornobyl is one of the most requested nontraditional excursions in Ukraine,” said Anatoliy Skrypnyk, who handles domestic tourism at the Kyiv-based SAM travel agency. His agency has offered trips to the exclusion zone for three years now, being one of the few Ukrainian tour operators to do so.
Most of their clients, Skrypnyk said, have been foreign journalists, scientists and public organizations who visit Chornobyl on separate trips or as part of general tours to Ukraine.
“There is clearly a demand for this kind of service, but I wouldn’t say we make a lot of money on it,” said Skrypnyk, who added that they offer such trips to diversify their services more than out of commercial interest. He declined to specify the number of people the firm takes to Chornobyl each year, but he did say it costs $90 per person for a six- or seven-hour excursion to the atomic facility, which was officially closed in December 2000.
“The agenda of the trip cannot really be modified much, and it usually includes a visit to the actual plant, the ghost town of Prypyat [near the plant, from where about 50,000 people were evacuated after the accident], and the burial site of the machinery that was used in the cleanup,” said Skrypnyk. Transport, food, and translation services are included, he said. For an extra cost, it’s also possible to visit villagers who chose to return to the zone in the years following the disaster, added Skrypnyk.
Olha Filimonova, who works with international clients at New Logic travel agency, said that on average they receive 20 inquiries a month about the trip to Chornobyl – mostly from foreign tourists. New Logic charges $435 for a group of seven people.
But, said Filimonova, the agency can’t always accommodate them.
“We, just like SAM travel agency, have to work closely with the state agency Chornobyl InterInform, which oversees all visits to the exclusion zone, and therefore we depend a lot on their capacities,” explained Filimonova. The transport and translators that Filimonova’s clients use have to be provided by Chornobyl InterInform, she said, but the state agency only has three English-speaking guides and a few minibuses.
Vadym Skalupa, deputy head of Chornobyl InterInform, insists that the transport and translation services his agency offers are just enough to keep the zone open to the public. He rejects the suggestion that the disaster zone has been turned into a tourist attraction.
“This is not a tourist business, and it’s not a show,” said Skalupa. “It’s a unique site of the greatest manmade catastrophe, and thousands of specialists are still working here on a day-to-day basis in the accident’s aftermath,” he said.
Skalupa said his agency was founded 11 years ago “to make the zone transparent to a wider public.” Since then, according to Skalupa, those with a taste for extreme tourism have been few, and not least because of the mandatory registration and checks at special control points at the entrance to the zone.
“It’s not the safest place to go to, either, when we talk about it as a tourist destination,” noted Skalupa, adding, however, that information on radiation levels is available in the zone to all visitors and that “it’s rare that a person gets a significant overdose of radiation after a day there.”
For Ukrainian Express Travel, an agency owned by Australian Val Girilovich, trips to Chornobyl have been a successful business. But Girilovich said his services are not for the poor.
“We offer exclusive trips for VIP persons,” said Girilovich. His agency specializes in off-track tours around Ukraine, offering, in addition to Chornobyl trips, options like riding in tanks or flying in fighter jets.
According to Girilovich, his company caters to high-paying clients, with a one-day Chornobyl excursion costing about $300. That includes transportation in a “Mercedes or another comfortable car” and the services of “English-speaking guides who worked at the station at the time of the accident,” Girilovich said.
“Once, we had two millionaires come to Ukraine at the same time and both wanted to go to Chornobyl,” Girilovich said. “They were experienced travelers, and they called it ‘the most memorable experience of their lives.’”
Skrypnyk of SAM travel agency agreed that Chornobyl would continue to attract seekers of one of the most striking human experiences. However, he said he didn’t rule out that his company would stop offering the service if the situation with safety issues deteriorated further.
“I don’t believe we can take loads of tourists to Chornobyl until the new sarcophagus is constructed there and all safety measures are taken into account,” said Skrypnyk, referring to a project in the works to build a new roof over the plant’s No. 4 reactor, which exploded in 1986.
“I didn’t realize how serious it was until I heard that the excursion guide who worked at the Chornobyl nuclear plant for years died recently at the age of 45,” he said.
